I was surprised and hyped to see the announcement. KSP is still in front of factorio in terms of hours played for me.

A few things came to mind, i don't know how i feel about them yet:
- Take2 aquired the IP and shifted the Dev-Work (can be good, squad wasn't a game-dev before KSP)
- Still Unity
- Never used interstellar tech, i very much like KSP close earthling-tech.

FWIW, as someone who is developing a space game in unity, and explored doing our own engine, or using others, I don't think this has to be a bad thing. They do a better job than we could as a small team in dealing with features and changes to the whole array of graphics drivers and operating systems. We certainly want to be available on Windows, Mac, and linux, and using unity seems to be a strong aid toward that goal. It has never stopped us from programming the physics we want to create exactly as we want to create it.

Professional devs can create a better game, technically. They just often lack a good game design and interesting content.
A creative dev can make up a good concept but might lack the experience or the anticipation for features in order to not having to rewrite large parts of the game to implement a feature. Or at least a dev like wube who is not afraid to rework multiplayer because the old version had major flaws.

Or think of minecraft. The original dev made an instant classic game and microsoft reworked the tech behind and turned it into a better performing game.

a negative example: my summer car
the dev has good ideas but he hits a wall made out of unity engine bricks.
He also lacks the skills or does not see a way to actually improve the performance of the game. The performance is bad.
But I'm sure a dev who is capable to work on the engine and knows in detail how things work might be able to make a game with stable fps.

When the devs of ksp2 can follow their line and accomplish their goals it might become a really good game.
Anyway don't get hyped about new games. Think of no mans sky.
was so promising but the first release was on a level of E.T. the extraterrestial for the atari 2600.